Trump has time and talent to topple O’Sullivan and Hendry

Eurosport article

https://www.eurosport.co.uk/snooker/wor ... tory.shtml

Thoughts?

It was a good read. I partially agree with Desmond.

IMO at this moment in time Trump doesn't quite possess O'Sullivan or Hendry's cueball control, they're still superior in this department. So from this perspective, his game still needs improving.
However, he can compensate with recovery shots. And on top of that, he has way more cue power, as Perry pointed out. In certain situations, that can make a huge difference. However, I don't believe those types of situations occur often enough to make that much of a difference.

As for him exceeding their achievements, that is possible, but it's not a given/ it's not guaranteed.
One record he will surely break is the career tally for century breaks. ROS doesn't have many years left at the top of the game and he doesn't play in that many events, so I doubt he'll have more than 1200 tons by the time he retires. So I see Trump matching and exceeding that into his mid to late 30's.

Given that there are more events nowadays, and that he plays in almost all of them (even joke events like Gibraltar Open - which I wouldn't even consider entering as a World Champ, I'd see doing that as degrading myself by competing in a Mickey Mouse event), if he continues to stay focused and practice, and given that there is no one his age to challenge him, he has a very good chance of also beating the record for most ranking events won.

As for total number of WC's won, this is a record I don't see him overtaking. The WC only comes once a year, and that will never change. Given his age, he still has around 10 good cracks at it, but I doubt he'll win more than another 3 or 4. Best case scenario he wins 6. To win one more than once every 2 years is almost impossible IMO. Like I said, it only comes once a year, so it only takes one bad match, or even a bad session and you're out.

Another record I don't see him beating is the total number of 147's, although this is a slightly less important record.

Can’t see it myself. He’s left it too late I think. He’ll be good for 4 or 5 wc’s if he’s lucky but we all know the first thing to go in a player is his long potting and he relies heavily on that.

I don't reckon they'll cancel all future World Championships. Trump will be stuck on one.

SnookerFan wrote:

he'll just built a wall around him.

I don't think he'll catch Hendry's WC haul or Ronnie's TC haul but this is not really worth discussing until Trump gets to 4 WC's. Higgins,Ronnie and to a lesser extent Selby, all struggled to get closer to Hendry and Davis when there was some expectation around them, so Judd may struggle with the same pressure

[quote="Johnny Bravo"]

Given that there are more events nowadays, and that he plays in almost all of them (even joke events like Gibraltar Open - which I wouldn't even consider entering as a World Champ, I'd see doing that as degrading myself by competing in a Mickey Mouse event), if he continues to stay focused and practice, and given that there is no one his age to challenge him, he has a very good chance of also beating the record for most ranking events won.
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Judd Trump played in the Gibraltar Open as he knew would receive a bonus of £150,000 as part of the Betvictor European series if he won it. Also no one was certain if the Tour Championship was going to go ahead for sure so it was a perfect opportunity for him to win a 6th ranking title. Judd Trump also loves the game so will play in as many events as possible and will not insult venues or other events or moan about petty little things unlike a few others.

Besides the Coronavirus, Judd's level of dominance might eventually be challenged if/when he gets married and has kids.

Neil Robertson observed in a recent interview that "(Judd) doesn’t have a family or anything like that, so he puts the practice in whenever he wants to: at night, in the morning, he doesn’t have to do school runs or anything so he’s really well set up to put in all the work."

It's a really good point, and one I hadn't considered. All of the other top players have partners and kids, which has to take at least some of their time and focus away from snooker. Judd doesn't have those distractions and can give snooker 100% of his attention.

We've all seen how Ding's game has declined since he became a father. If/when Judd ever has a family of his own, perhaps his game will suffer a bit as a result...

I think Ding's game started to decline before he became a father, but after he did so, it got worst, with only a few flashes of brilliance here and there like this season's UK.

As for Trump, I think he has realised this is his time to shine, he knows he doesnt have real competitors of his age who can challenge him on a regular basis, so he knows he's got to make the most of this opportunity while he can. I don't think we'll see him having wife and kids anytime soon, and who knows, maybe he doesnt want to, and if so fair play to him, we are free to make the choices we want.